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7
Joel L. Fleishman
6 V. O. Key, Jr., Southern
Politics in State and Nation:
A New Edition, ( Knoxville,
The University of
Tennessee Press, second
printing, 1950), pp. 205– 206
as I know, the only one has been over my decision to follow Terry Sanford over
to Duke University. Tom gave Terry the benefit of the doubt, and I think he did
me, too, but we have hardly ever been together during the last 35 years when Tom
could not find some opportunity to knock Duke, always in jest, of course. At least
I think so. Terry tried often to blunt such criticism. When a faculty member asked
Terry where I lived, he replied “ Joel lives at the West End of the Duke Forest,”
which was Terry’s way of avoiding having to admit that I live in Chapel Hill.
I hope you will forgive my going on so long about Tom, but I do so not only
to show my gratitude for his friendship and for the inspiration he has been to
me, but also because he is one of the best exemplars I know of what integrity in
public life is all about. In the 54 years of our friendship, I have never known Tom
Lambeth to make a decision— personal, career, political or otherwise— on other
than the basis of the public interest. So far as I know, he has never been influenced
in his decisions by his own self- interest. And that is what this Thomas W. Lambeth
Inaugural Lecture is all about: “ Ethics, Self- Interest, and the Public Good.”
“ North Carolina’s position of respectability in the nation rests on more
than popular imagination. Its governmental processes have been
scrupulously orderly. For half a century no scandals have marred
the state administration. No band of highwaymen posing as public
officials has raided the public treasury.” 6
After the then- authoritative scholar of Southern politics, V. O. Key, originally
penned those words in the late Seventies, they became enshrined as conventional
wisdom among all those who think and comment about the state of politics in
North Carolina. Indeed, so much so that, nearly four years ago, when former
Ethics in Public Life in North Carolina

7
Joel L. Fleishman
6 V. O. Key, Jr., Southern
Politics in State and Nation:
A New Edition, ( Knoxville,
The University of
Tennessee Press, second
printing, 1950), pp. 205– 206
as I know, the only one has been over my decision to follow Terry Sanford over
to Duke University. Tom gave Terry the benefit of the doubt, and I think he did
me, too, but we have hardly ever been together during the last 35 years when Tom
could not find some opportunity to knock Duke, always in jest, of course. At least
I think so. Terry tried often to blunt such criticism. When a faculty member asked
Terry where I lived, he replied “ Joel lives at the West End of the Duke Forest,”
which was Terry’s way of avoiding having to admit that I live in Chapel Hill.
I hope you will forgive my going on so long about Tom, but I do so not only
to show my gratitude for his friendship and for the inspiration he has been to
me, but also because he is one of the best exemplars I know of what integrity in
public life is all about. In the 54 years of our friendship, I have never known Tom
Lambeth to make a decision— personal, career, political or otherwise— on other
than the basis of the public interest. So far as I know, he has never been influenced
in his decisions by his own self- interest. And that is what this Thomas W. Lambeth
Inaugural Lecture is all about: “ Ethics, Self- Interest, and the Public Good.”
“ North Carolina’s position of respectability in the nation rests on more
than popular imagination. Its governmental processes have been
scrupulously orderly. For half a century no scandals have marred
the state administration. No band of highwaymen posing as public
officials has raided the public treasury.” 6
After the then- authoritative scholar of Southern politics, V. O. Key, originally
penned those words in the late Seventies, they became enshrined as conventional
wisdom among all those who think and comment about the state of politics in
North Carolina. Indeed, so much so that, nearly four years ago, when former
Ethics in Public Life in North Carolina